New Year...

So- I decided last year that I want to establish some traditions and fun things to do for New Year's Eve/Day.  I think it's' kind of an awesome holiday- to celebrate the passing of one year and the beginning of a new one. I want it to be a time to celebrate life and time. The thing is- I don't have many ways to do it.  I'm looking for ideas so if you have any New Year Traditions and are willing to share, please do!

Crafty goodness

The latest creative endeavors (primarily inspired by pintrest, my latest obsession):

 Word Art- it's a gift

 Necklaces from metal washers

 More word art- also a gift

Awesome wall piece- also a gift (my family is big...)

Before

After

This is for me on my door! :)

Ribbon Christmas tree. Also for me :)

NYC

Back in September, my brother Josh came all the way out to the east coast for a business trip in NYC.  I got to go up and stay with him, see the city (again), and see a good friend. Since I've seen many of the typical tourist sites before, I ended up spending a lot of time on this trip just wandering around the city.  It was really fun to just walk and watch and enjoy having free time.  Unfortunately, the first day I was there, I was walking down the street and taking pictures (cool buildings, a random dance performance in the middle of....some random place [it looked like it was for a class] etc.) except, whoops! I set it down and alas, my camera is now gone. I'm really sad about it- more now than I even was then- so I only got a few pictures.  What I did get to see was the Staten Island Ferry (which is a beautiful ride in the evening!), the Empire State building (it was the third time that I had gone, but the first time at night and the first time that Josh had ever been up), the Natural History Museum, an Asian cooking competition in Times Square, Battery Park, and a really really sketchy part of Queens.  Josh and I also got tickets to go see Mary Poppins which was so much fun. I love Broadway! And it was simply fabulous to be able to see Josh again.  Hooray for family and fun cities.

Anyway, it was a fun, relaxing trip, with a lot of blisters from walking, and some good memories.  PLUS one of the things on my list of things to do while I'm 27 was to explore NYC, so there ya go! One more check off the list!

This is a video of a...thing I found in Battery Park.  Literally I was just walking with my friend when all the sudden I heard bells. And what do you know? They were coming from my feet!  SOOOOO cool. I want one of these. I took a picture of the square that told who the guy was who invented it because I decided that he is brilliant!

This is my friend Chaya.  She and I wandered around Battery Park and rode the Staten Island Ferry. PLUS we played on the playground.  Good stuff.

The Natural History Museum, the exhibit about relative sizes!

This is the Toys R Us at Times Square.  It's AMAZING! and HUGE.  This dinosaur MOVES. And there is a lego land, and a farris wheel, I love that place. I love toys! Good thing I get to play with them at work.

Ah chocolate! Need I say more? Happiness. :)

The first time that I went to New York was in the summer of 2001.  It was just a few month before the attack on the WTC and when I went back in 2004 we went to Ground Zero and saw the makeshift memorials and sang (it was a choir trip).  It was really touching to go back this time and see the memorial that is set up and the rebuilding that has happened.  It is a beautiful, peaceful place and will be even more so when they finish the museum and other buildings on the property.  I had lots of thoughts while I was there, but that's all I'll share for now.

At some point I realized that I didn't have a single picture of me and Josh. So we remedied that!

Skyline Drive

Fall is a beautiful time of year here. Especially before the rains hit.  The leaves are stunning and there are trees EVERYWHERE!  It is so different from out west. The aspens turning yellow in Colorado are beautiful, especially in the mountains, but the vast array of colors and especially the bright reds are nothing short of breathtaking.

Shenandoah National Park is about and hour and half away from home, and there is a road that goes through this portion of the mountains called "Skyline Drive".  You wind up and down the hills and it's a beautiful park and a perfect fall drive.  It was on my list of things to do this year- 27 things while I'm 27.  I was lucky enough to find a friend to go with me in the middle of the week so we could enjoy each other's company and avoid traffic. T'was a delightful evening. We went up in the late afternoon and stayed for sunset. Here's some of the pictorial evidence. And I have to admit openly, I lost my camera in NYC in October (the post is yet to come) so I borrowed my sister's and I had no idea how to use it, so I reverted to the oh so easy editing properties of picasa more than I typically do.

Catching up reverse time...

Many people have asked how I fared in the recent hurricane turned "super storm".  It was quite uneventful.  I have tons of dry food and cooked a whole bunch of muffins in prep for loosing power which I assumed was inevitable.  I was blessed to not loose power at all.  The storm was pretty not exciting for me, except for my one sincere moment of stupidity....

Sunday night as it was starting to rain, I decided to curl up in a blanket and go sit out on my balcony.  I kind of love being wrapped up in a blanket in the "cold" and I have a fabulous rocking chair out there. So I went out and sat. Unfortunately, instead of pulling the screen door shut behind me, I very diligently pulled the glass door shut and the bar was not fully secured in it's "up" position. Thus, it decided to fall down. And when I turned to go inside, I found myself very thoroughly locked out.

While I have shared this story with a number of people and they have come up with smarter plans than mine, I thought all I could think and ended up carrying out a plan that worked perfectly well.  While I considered walking down to the strip mall a mile or so away, I wasn't sure how much help I would receive. Plus I didn't have shoes, or socks.  I didn't have my phone, my ipod, or my wallet. So no money, no information but what my little brain contains. No nothin. 

I started thinking of friends that could help. Unfortunately, they don't live close. And...I don't know where anyone in my ward (my church congregation) lives except for 1 or 2 families.  So...I set out and walked the 2.5 miles to my bishop's house and very sheepishly knocked on their door and asked for help. We ended up finding the emergency maintenance number and had them come and let me in the house.  Awesome. Let me tell you how brilliant I felt that night.  I decided that I would stay indoors for the rest of the storm. And so I did. Superstorm Sandy was primarily watching the TV show "Once Upon a Time" for me. Super exciting. 

More projects

Have I said yet that I decided that I am making Christmas presents for everyone in my family this year? It's a fabulous excuse to expel my creative energies. So...maybe you might see some of these again, but I am just so excited about them that I had to share! :)

Suncatchers: I found the butterflies on clearance at Pier One, CD's, sparkles, beads, and all kinds of stuff to reflect the sun. Turned out fun.

So, I got this idea on pintrest to do a tree and use buttons for the leaves, but unfortunately I didn't have the right size buttons, and it really didn't work with the shape of my tree.  What I did have was extra stems of flowers from a bouquet so I decided to pull them off and make myself a spring tree.  I think this was especially appealing because I was in the hospital for half of spring.  While I hate the allergies that come with spring, I love the blooming trees.  I missed a lot of them this year, so...now I have one year round. :)

This one is another pintrest find (I'm in love in case you were wondering). I used canvas boards, modge podge to paper it and buttons for initials!  Then ribbon to hang. I love the way they turned out!!

The "w" questions

Sometimes, I probably regress in my development. Back to the age of...I dunno 3, 4, 5.  That age of the "w questions".  It's actually described like that in some basic development books. What do I mean by this?  While, in my soul searching which I do on a regular basis, I find myself questioning some of the most basic elements of life that I perhaps have taken for granted.  For example- trust, What is it? Why should I trust you? Why should I trust anyone? How do you know if you can trust someone? When is it appropriate to trust and when is it more appropriate to express distrust? Who is really trust worthy...especially those people who are "supposed" to be trusted...are they really people to be trusted?  Just one line of thought that I go through....regularly.

Well, recently there have been two other lines of thought that go about like this and I decided to do art pieces about them and hang them on my wall.  You see, my move to a new home was one that was based highly on emotional need.  I found myself in a house with people that I thought I trusted and felt safe with.  I was away from home for a whole month and wanted to go back more than I could even express. I wanted to be in my safe place.  But when I got there, I found that it wasn't the safe place that I had left, and circumstances as they were...well...it's hard to live with someone who is emotionally based like I am and compromises to help rebuild that sense of safety provided impossible.

So as I moved I considered very deeply the concept of "home".  It's really a deep and somewhat confusing topic at times.  I grew up in home that was filled with the gospel, and siblings, and parents, and activity, and support, and love, and betrayal, and secrets, and pain, and belittlement.  And so as I've grown older, it's been really confusing to think of home and think great things like "home is where the heart is" and then to think...except that home is where I get the most hurt and where I have to hide my feelings. So I've searched long and hard and talked and pondered over the meaning of home. And most especially what I wanted and needed in a home as I created my very own home. One that I had complete control of and could make safe and happy or whatever I wanted it to be. I wanted something to hang on my wall to remind me of this home that I have been building and so I made this:

A bunch of pieces of cute paper, modge podge galore, a sharpie, a ruler, scissors and a whole lot of time and this is what I came up with. (In one night by the way...which was kind of stupid. It took a long time and I paid for not going to sleep). The quotes I included were especially meaningful to me:

The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.
Maya Angelou

I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.
Maya Angelou

Where thou art, that is home.
Emily Dickinson

“Home wasn't a set house, or a single town on a map. It was wherever the people who loved you were, whenever you were together. Not a place, but a moment, and then another, building on each other like bricks to create a solid shelter that you take with you for your entire life, wherever you may go.” 
― Sarah Dessen, What Happened to Goodbye

“Home is the nicest word there is.” 
― Laura Ingalls Wilder

There is one more quote by Maya Angelo that I ran into a couple years ago when I read her book Letter to my Daughter that I will include here, but it's long so it's not for the faint of heart. :)

Question number two came because I was dating someone the last few months (as you may have noticed.  We just broke up this week. I should still post some pictures. He was a general focus of my summer. Anyway- my relationship with him had me questioning love.  What is love? How do people fall in and out of love? Is it just this chance?  No...I really don't believe that. I believe it is much more a choice. I think that love is a feeling, but more importantly it is a feeling that leads to action. Maybe it even gets to be the verb.  So, I ended up doing another piece about love.  It's a topic I've questioned multiple times in life, usually when I'm dating somebody. It's another one that is hard for me because too often throughout my life I've heard people say "I love you", but then there actions say something different. Or I thought their actions were saying love, but I found out later that love doesn't have to be that way and doesn't have to make you miserable.  And so I came up with this:

I know- not the greatest picture.  Neither of them are. I decided that love cannot be expressed completely in words. No way.  So I gathered images of what love meant to me...not just romantic love, but LOVE, all kinds of love included.  Because I think that all those kinds of love aren't so different as we sometimes imagine.  Maybe the other feelings around love make it seem different, but love, in itself...I think it's really the same. 

Here are the quotes I chose to go with it:

"Standing beside you,

I took an oath

to make you life simpler

by complicating mine

and what I always thought would happen did:

I was lifted up in joy."

David Ignatour

"Love is my decision to make your problem my concern"

Robert Shuller

"The essence of love is kindness."

Robert L. Stevonson

"Love is our true destiny.  We do not find the meaning of love by ourselves, alone- we find it with another."

Thomas Morton

"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear."

1 John 4:18

Of all fires, love is the only inexhaustible one."

Pablo Neruda

"God is love."

1 John 4:8

And so I continue on. And hopefully my therapist loves me for it. Because I still ask all those "w" questions.  And some days I think I've found the answer.  And the next, maybe not. But for me, it helps to know that I can keep on asking.. 

p.s. congratulations if you made it to the end! :)

A missing month

Well friends...I've got to be honest. It hasn't been my greatest month of all. August was fraught with illness and that is just no fun. A couple of weeks ago I started having an asthma attack that wasn't responding to my albuterol. After 24 hours or so, I finally decided to go to the ER (it was Saturday before urgent cares were open) because I really couldn't breathe and my whole body hurt.  They found nothing wrong except that I couldn't breathe and even then, my lungs sounded good to the doctor. Apparently, I don't wheeze very much when I have asthma attacks. My bronchioles just constrict and you can't hear it. But I can feel it.  So the doc sent me home with orders to come back if this that and the other happened.

By Sunday night/Monday morning this that and the other had all happened.  I had a fever that peaked at 102.3 and I still couldn't breathe. So, feeling like a complete idiot, I went back to the ER. The doc thought that I had pneumonia (didn't surprise me, it's happened before) because she could hear it, but everything came back normal. Ironically, I had had a chest x-ray just the week before because I had a positive TB test. Then another one on Saturday, so she tried to avoid a third x-ray for the week, but with all the blood work normal, she wanted to see my lung.  Apparently it looked clear, but she treated me for pneumonia. Long week.  I basically went between bed and the floor to do crafts for 1 week straight. The next week I worked some, but was wasted at the end of the day.

Insert a more normal week until this Thursday. So, on my list of things to do while I am 27, I included rollerblading.  I used to go with my brothers and I loved it. So I thought it would be great to start again. Unfortunately, I chose a particular part of a path that I was not familiar with and I fell (twice) and hit my head (twice) [note....because I'm a genius so I decided to keep going after the first try] and thanks to a fabulous good Samaritan I went to the ER, but not in an ambulance. I'm rather glad he was there because I was kind of disoriented, but I wouldn't have called an ambulance so I would have tried to drive to the ER.  That could have been a catastrophe.  So a CT scan, ibuprofen and acetaminophen with codeine later, I patient waited while someone...(after a long list of calls and texts) could come and pick me up. That was last Thursday. I'm doing much better now, but still a little sore in the head and the back.  At least I've been able to wean some of the NSAIDS. I am afraid I won't have any of my stomach left after this month because I've taken so many with both incidents!!

So there's where I have been.  Next post will be some pictures of the crafting I'm doing. I decided to make Christmas gifts for everyone in the family. It's crazy really, but I'm loving it. Pintrest is my new best friend. I love the ideas I find there.

Shout out for the kind man named Chris who I never saw before, but not only found me on the asphalt, but walked me back to my car to get my stuff, drove me to the ER, then waiting with me until he was able to make sure that I gave them an accurate history (I was out of it). I hope to be able to find him and thank him for real. He was a certainly a blessing!!

Hope you all had a much better August than mine!!

This si the awesome hole in my pants from the fall(s). It was rather large. Fortunately not right on my seat, but I was showin some nice skin on my thigh as I stumbled into the ER.

Projecting

Not projecting as in a projector, but projecting as in the act of completing projects.  That is my night tonight. And part of my day. Luck me, I went to a psychiatric hospital and found out that it could be therapeutic! YES! I love when things are love to do are actually more meaningful than I first thought. While I was in the hospital we had a group called "cognitive task".  It was run by an OT and we worked on projects, things that were tangible and three dimensional and usually had a specific purpose (example, grounding beads from previous post).

Today I worked on two projects that I would say are cognitive tasks.  One is repainting a piece of furniture so it more ideally matches the decor of my new place (which is oh so slowly coming together to be something lovely).

The other project is something that I am making as a gift for my co-workers who I have left/am leaving. (I quit my job. I'm still there working per diem, but not full time. In the midst of switching jobs).  I wanted to leave them with something small. I found these bowls at goodwill for $.96 and already had paint pens. It's a bowl for "oxygen moments".  That is a skill my therapist taught me to help take a break from serious moments or emotions and feel something positive.  You think of a memory, a joke, an experience that is associated with a positive emotion and focus on it, describe it- either verbally or written, or drawing. As humans, we remember things in different ways so when you start remembering this positive thing you start to feel the positive emotion.  Well, my job is extremely high stress with way too much drama. Everyone needs some optimism and a reminder of why they are there, so I made these bowls for my team members and am going to write down memories that are happy, funny or tender for them. I might decorate the bowls more too. I haven't decided if simple words is better or a little more color. Feel free to offer suggestions. 

You can also see my hammer is out on my kitchen table as I randomly decide to work on hanging decorations.  I just haven't had the vision of what I want so it's been a slow process. 

NY, NY

I went to NY this past weekend. Saturday I saw a former co-worker who is now in PT school in a teeny tiny town outside of White Plains.  I won't lie, I'm jealous of the more rural setting. I still miss...space! :)  Then Sunday, I went in to NYC and met up with some friends, spent time talking and catching up, and then did art at Bryant Park which is (as you can see) right by the Empire state building, the NY public Library, a couple blocks from Grand Central Station...you get the idea.  It was a glorious weekend! (Although, I am exhausted this week).